Random Update Of A Re-Entry Well; A Red River Well Re-Entered In 2001; A Bakken Well Now

The Bakken surprises, at least for me, never end.

I'm going to do this quickly, and no doubt there will be errors. There are 374 pages in the well file report. I don't understand 90% of what I read, and I certainly don't have time to read all 374 pages, so this will be done quickly. Readers can tell me where I'm wrong and we will go from there.

First look at this case in the January, 2014, NDIC hearing dockets:

Case No. 21599: Application of SM Energy Co. for an order amending the applicable orders for the Bear Den-Bakken Pool to allow up to six wells to be drilled upon a 640-acre spacing unit described as Section 25, T.149N., R.96W., McKenzie County, ND, at any location not closer than 200 feet to any boundary of the spacing unit or granting such other relief as is appropriate.

I was curious why SM would go back and request six wells in a single section. 

There is currently one well sited in that section:

• 11913, 1,476/17/0, SM Energy, Bear Den Federal 10-25HR, Red River (1986)/Bakken (2001)/Devonian (2006). [The IP for the Red River was 1,476; the IP for the original Bakken was 17 (see below).] Cumulative production: for the Red River, 173K; for the Bakken, to date: 50K. The Devonian was dry. The Red River is PNA.

There are three vertical PNA wells in that section, note the formations and the cumulative production:

• 1971, 236, SM Energy, Bear Den 2, Bear Den, a Madison well, t9/58; cum 745K 12/05
• 1469, 152, Flying J Oil & Gas, Bear Den Unit 1, Bear Den, a Madison well, t9/57; cum 334K  3/90;
• 5513, 22, Adobe Resources, Federal 25 1, Bear Den, a Madison well, t8/75; cum 2K 2/76;

Finally, there is a Bakken horizontal sited in an adjoining section that drills into this section:

• 16446, 97, SM Energy, Bear Den Federal 4-30H, a Madison well, t3/07; cum 87K 10/13;

The most recent Madison well, #16446, is a typical Madison well with NO decline rate to speak of. From the beginning it never produced more than 2,000 bo per month, generally in the 1,500 bbl/month range, and is currently producing about 1,200 bo per month, and flaring 100% of its natural gas. This well is located in the Bear Den oil field, but only two miles from the very well-known, much discussed Helis Grail oil field.

So, to summarize: various operators, including Flying J, have been drilling for oil in this section since 1957. That's almost 60 years ago. In 2001, well before the current Bakken boom in North Dakota, a company called St Mary Land and Exploration decided to re-enter an old Madison well, #11913. They brought in a work over rig (which I associate with low cost) and reached total depth in less than 12 days, back during a hot July in North Dakota. The well was then known as the Bear Den #4 well and had been "temporarily abandoned and [had] not continuously produced since June 1998. During the last six months [this was written 10/22/2001] of continuous production from the Red River, oil production averaged less than 1 bopd."[By the way, there's a story line there, also, for astute readers regarding a well that averaged less than 1 bopd.]

So, SM re-entered an old Madison well with a work over rig, brought in a productive Bakken well that has produced about 50,000 bbls of Bakken oil to date. All natural gas is being flared, though a sundry report stated that SM was putting a pump on this well in 2008 and would lay the pipeline necessary to gather the natural gas for processing, which may have been done, but it is not being delivered to a processing plant.

Also, the IP on the NDIC ticket suggests the 2001 Bakken IP was 17 when, in fact, the sundry report suggests it was 119 bopd, a calculated 24-hour flow rate. If I am reading the sundry report correctly, it was an open hole frack using about 331,000 lbs of proppant (almost inconsequential by today's standards).

Total vertical depth was 11,048 feet, and total depth was 14,572, so the horizontal was very, very short by today's standards.

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This is the edited NDIC ticket for this well, edited for easier reading:

NDIC File No: 11913     API No: 33-053-02146-00-00     CTB No: 111913
Well Type: OG     Well Status: A     Status Date: 9/11/2008     Wellbore type: Horizontal Re-Entry
Location: NWSE 25-149-96    
Current Operator: SM ENERGY COMPANY
Current Well Name: BEAR DEN FEDERAL 10-25HR
Total Depth: 14572     Field: BEAR DEN
Spud Date(s):  12/29/1985  7/19/2008
Completion Data
   Pool: BAKKEN     Perfs: 11360-14572     Comp: 12/29/2001     Status: AL     Date: 11/19/2008    
   Pool: DEVONIAN     Perfs: 11696-11704     Comp: 2/16/2006     Status: DRY     Date: 2/16/2006   
   Pool: RED RIVER     Perfs: 14188-14352G     Comp: 3/20/1986   Status: PNA   Date: 12/27/2001 
 Cumulative Production Data
   Pool: RED RIVER     Cum Oil: 172924     Cum MCF Gas: 1096323     Cum Water: 167722
   Pool: DEVONIAN     Cum Oil: 0     Cum MCF Gas: 0     Cum Water: 0
   Pool: BAKKEN     Cum Oil: 49545     Cum MCF Gas: 46275     Cum Water: 4412
Production Test Data
   IP Test Date: 3/20/1986     Pool: RED RIVER     IP Oil: 1476     IP MCF: 9010     IP Water: 14
   IP Test Date: 12/29/2001     Pool: BAKKEN     IP Oil: 17     IP MCF: 20     IP Water: 0

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The area of interest (note the Helis Grail to the east):

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A Note To The Granddaughters

I am reading Franz Kafka's Amerika which was translated and published posthumously by Kafka's close friend Max Brod. My soft cover copy is in such good condition, it suggests I have never read it. There is no price tag on it so I do not know when and where I picked it up. Certainly I would not have ordered it from Amazon, and it is unlikely to have come from one of my daughters' collections of books, although when she was growing up, we spoke often of Kafkaesque situations: "...below decks he found to his disappointment that a gangway which made a handy short cut had been barred for the first time in his experience, probably in connection with the disembarkation of so many passengers, and he had painfully to find his way down endlessly recurring stairs, corridors with countless turnings, through an empty room with a deserted writing-table, until in the end, since he had taken this route no more than once or twice and always among a crowd of other people, he lost himself completely. In his bewilderment ..."

That was from his very first page in Amerika and immediately reminded me of getting lost with our older daughter some thirty years ago in a street mall in Trier, Germany, with all its back passages, and stairs and escalators which seemed to offer no return walk ways.

There was no specific reason to start reading this book at this time. I occasionally see something by or about Kafka. My interest is occasionally piqued. I don't recall what it was this time, but something reminded me of Kafka, and looking for a small book to carry and read while waiting in Christmas lines I stumbled across this book.

I read Max Brod's preface to Amerika yesterday and started the first chapter. Today I finished that chapter. It has to do with the protagonist, Karl Rossmann's arrival in America. The first chapter, the first scene as it were, takes place in the ocean-going ship's cabin where Karl is trying to "defend" the stoker who feels he has been wronged. We learn in that chapter why Karl is coming to America. Surprisingly, Karl meets his uncle, now a "senator," in that same meeting.

The first chapter is about 35 pages long; it is a short story that stands on its own. That's how I would introduce high school students to Kafka. I would not require them to read the book. I would provide the background to Kafka, why he is important, his writing style, and what he wrote. I would assign only the first chapter to be read, knowing that some students would read the entire book, and others would read almost nothing. If I told them that pages 29 - 30 included an x-rated sex scene ["... offered her breast that he might listen to hers in turn, but could not bring him to do it, pressed her naked belly against his body, felt with her hand between his legs, so disgustingly that his head and neck started up from the pillows, then thrust her body several times against him -- it was as if she were a part of himself ..."] my hunch is everyone would be taking out their books and turning to those pages to see what they had missed. LOL, as my daughter would text.

It is entirely coincidental, and serendipitous, I suppose, that I happened to select Amerika to read, and it is remarkable that the first chapter was about Karl's arrival in America. I had just re-read the biography of my grandfather Paul Oksol who arrived in America in 1907 under very similar circumstances, coming across the ocean with his trunk (which Karl lost on his voyage, according to Kafka) in steerage accommodations. A simple google search, by the way, will "discover" that on-line biography.